Arrows and Circles: An Anniversary Talk about Fifty Years of ICTM and the Study of Traditional Music

Abstract

It's an honor for me to have been invited to speak on this occasion of the golden anniversary of the ICTM. Bemused by this choice, I have sought for the program committee's motivations and have concluded that they asked me because they thought I am such a senior citizen that I probably helped Theodore Baker proofread his dissertation in 1882. Not so, but as I was present at the 1950 meeting of IFMC in Bloomington, I may qualify as the person who has been attending IFMC-ICTM meetings longer than anyone else here today. In that summer of 1950, I had just begun to study seriously with local arrangements chair, Dr. George Herzog, and he asked me to be his errand boy. So I'll hark back several times today to those precedent-setting times. I also have the feeling that the program committee ended up with me because they associated me with the part of the world in which we are meeting today, an area that was seminal, as well, to much of what happened later in our field. And so, in looking unsystematically at our history, I'll be pointing out how so much of significance happened within two or three hundred kilometers from here. And also, while the concept of “keynote talk” suggests prediction and a perspective of the future, I have always ducked when asked by students what I think may happen some day, so I'll talk somewhat about the past and avoid prediction.

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